working out at home; to quit or not? (storytime)

This is a question I ask myself on days when I’m struggling to complete my 30 minutes workout on Nike Training App at 6:30 in the morning, when all i want to do is to just go back to bed. Why do I have to workout so early? It’s because if I don’t do it in the morning, I’m not doing it again.

I like working out, I do, I feel great after a workout session. Not as happy as these 5 great Nigerian reads make me, but then, books are a different kind of high. I just don’t have enough willpower to get myself up every day to exercise inside of the house even with so much free time. An effect of the Covid-19.

So here’s my cycle; I go on a long, no exercise break for a while, and then one day after I’ve eaten a little too much, I notice that my jeans fit too tightly or some other tell like that. In most of these situations, I promptly announce to the world i.e. my mum and my sister, that I’m going on a diet and would be exercising every morning. Here, my mum always says that I’m much too skinny to even consider dieting. I’m not guys

I mostly don’t stick to the diet and in all fairness, I keep up with the early workouts for at least two weeks, even on days when I don’t want to. Then one day in the third week, I skip a day. I may have overslept or just wasn’t up to it. I promise myself to make it up the next day. If I get up the next day, great. If I don’t, chances are, I won’t exercise the next day either. That is the end of that cycle, bye Nike Training App, till we meet again in a few months.

This start and stop routine has always worked for me, in a way. I’m not winning any triathlon medals, but my body feels great and I feel and look amazing. Many thanks for that, to my great skincare routine. A few months ago though, something changed.

It didn’t start as the usual cycle does, so that’s something. I wanted to run, to try it out at least, and to be fit. I searched online for the best running apps, and I found this post on the best running apps. It made me go ahead to download the Nike Run Club.

My running episode

I went on a diet just before I started running. this time it was a proper achievable diet with guidelines of how I was going to eventually ease out of it and into a regular healthy eating habit. I started running a few months ago with Nike Run Club. It was amazing. There were even runs for days you don’t feel like running, the “I don’t wanna run, run”

Runners high is real, I can tell you that because I felt it. I was sticking to my diet, regardless of the very tasty temptations from my mum. Other runners in the area even already recognized me, and I always succeeded in getting out of bed every morning. My speed was picking up and my endurance level was increasing, all this and I’ve only just started. It felt great.

After my run one morning and I was about to start my day, I felt pain in my leg just below my left knee. The pain niggled me throughout the day and I felt that maybe I had pushed myself too much and decided to take a break the next day. The pain persisted through the next day and seeing as it was not just the usual muscle soreness, I turned to my good old friend, google.

Turns out it’s pretty common, especially in women. The diagnosis was runner’s knee and I didn’t know what to do. After perusing so many conflicting bits of advice online, the consensus was that I could continue running. Not as much as I usually do and at the same time properly taking precautions. This included stretching before running, maintaining proper running form, and icing my knee after running.

I followed all these guidelines but it only got worse. Kneeling or bending were out of the question, and on bad days it ached really deeply and I had to be careful while walking. I had no trainer or expert to guide me through running safely with runners knee and I didn’t know if I was causing major harm or not (it sure felt like it, hurt like hell). I had to stop running, for now at least.

Post Running

I don’t know which one hurt more, that I had to stop running or the runner’s knee. Running is an exercise that I fell in love with and was looking forward to share with the world (not just my sister and mom this time).

It took me one month to completely recover from the knee ache and now I feel good. I’m not on a diet anymore and now it feels like the running was just one of my cycles and now I’m mid-cycle. It isn’t though, because as soon as I’m able, I will find a way around this runner’s knee and get back to doing what I love.

You are the second person I’m telling about this, do you know? Okay, now maybe the 200th

Love, Tola.